For stripping onions, it has been in general practice to preliminarily provide the onions with longitudinal cuts with blades or the like and subsequently strip the onions by blowing compressed air against them. In this prior art technique, a process of forming onions with longitudinal cuts is necessary. This process requires a great deal of time and labor, as well as complicating the apparatus and leading to increased cost thereof.
The inventor has conducted extensive research and investigations to develop an apparatus which can strip onions without preliminarily forming longitudinal cuts but in a state having the root. In the prior art, a cylindrical onion guide path having a relatively large diameter has been proposed to guide a plurality of onions, of large and small sizes, at one time. A separating chamber in the form of a crown-shaped cylindrical chamber having a middle spherical crown portion, is disposed to face the onion outlet of the onion guide path. The plurality of onions fed into the separating chamber are acted upon by a vortex flow of compressed air and are caused thereby to rub one another so as to be stripped. The stripped onions are successively discharged, while the peelings are blown away. In practice in this apparatus, however, the air speed is reduced when a plurality of onions are located in the spherical chamber mentioned above. Therefore, it is difficult to obtain smooth discharge of the stripped onions, and clogging is liable to occur in the separating chamber. Once the clogging occurs, onions can neither be moved through the onion guide path nor stripped any further.
A first object of the invention is to provided an apparatus for stripping onions, in which the construction of the onion guide path and separating chamber is improved so as to eliminate the afore-mentioned clogging of the separating chamber and also in which onions are supplied one after another at a predetermined time-wise or distance-wise interval.
A second object of the invention is to provide an apparatus for stripping onions, in which the onion can be discharged correctly toward the center of the separating chamber and can also be protected from a bruise or other damage that might otherwise be caused as the onion strikes the peripheral wall of the separating chamber.
A third object of the invention is to provide an apparatus for stripping onions, in which a nozzle structure of a compressed air arrangement provided on the outer periphery of the onion guide path is simplified, and also which permits the adjustment of the speed of compressed air discharged from the nozzle and permits a change of onion guide paths of different diameters to be readily made.
A fourth object of the invention is to provide an apparatus for stripping onions, in which the stripped onions can be smoothly and reliably discharged while peelings are discharged through a separate route.
The above and further objects and features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description thereof by having reference to the accompanying drawings.